<Begin Segment 16>

BN: And then from there, you're there for a while, so again, you're going to a new high school now.

HK: This is Sherman Oaks, so the high school was Van Nuys High. And Van Nuys High at that time was a six-year high school. And so I got there still in now '46, so I'm still in the ninth grade, so I had to finish up the ninth grade, so I enrolled in Van Nuys High for the last few months of my ninth grade. And I ended up going to some kind of graduation exercise to graduate from the ninth grade because then ten, eleven, twelve was considered senior high.

BN: And how were you treated there?

HK: Treatment at Van Nuys High? To me, I recall it was good, very good. Met these really good friends, and that was a good experience for me.

BN: And then your father's still away at this point?

HK: Still working somewhere on the railroad.

BN: Are you writing letters or communicating with him?

HK: I did not.

BN: Or even visiting?

HK: My mother was still contacting (my father) to find out what was happening and what they were going to try to do eventually to get the family together.

BN: And he didn't visit you?

HK: No, he did not visit us while we were there on Sherman Oaks.

BN: What was your sense... I mean, I know you're a teenager, but did you have a sense of how your mother was kind of handling the situation? It was a difficult situation, she's separated from the husband -- not separated, but he's living separately, working as a housekeeper, has a son at home trying to keep things together. Did you have a sense of how she was doing or how she was handling that situation?

HK: No, because she never put up any kind of complaints or mention about what it was like. Didn't say what my dad was doing, how he was doing, she just went about her business of taking care of her job, and then hoped that I would be able to just go ahead and finish my schooling. So no discussion at all between what our family situation was and what's going to happen.

BN: Did she have off days and did she have things, friends or did she do hobbies or other kinds of things that she did, or was she kind of on duty all the time?

HK: No, I don't recall anything where we were able to go off together with just my mom and myself to go visit some old friends or whatever, I don't recall doing any of that during the, I think we were there about a year and a half.

BN: Okay, so after the year and a half, what was the next move?

HK: Okay, so somehow my mother and my dad figured, okay, let's see if we can get together and get our own business going again. And so I don't know how or who found this place in L.A. on Vermont Avenue, but it was a dry cleaning and laundry business just like they had before the war. And so I don't know if they purchased it from the person that was there before or what, but anyway, that was the next move. We moved out of the Sherman Oaks place and to another dry cleaning laundry business there on Vermont and right near First Street, you know (by) Virgil junior high. So we went there and then my dad left his railroad job to come and join my mom and then they were back in the dry cleaning business.

BN: Was it a similar arrangement, where the family lived in the back?

HK: We lived in the back just like before the war.

BN: And what was that one, what was this new business called?

HK: They just assumed the same name from the previous owner, it was called El Patio, so El Patio cleaners.

BN: And then you now are switching to yet another school.

HK: Yes, so I'm there on First and Vermont, and that is in the L.A. Unified District, and so I should have been going to Belmont High. But because I was born in Hollywood, always wanted to go to Hollywood High, we knew of a family in Hollywood that said we could use their address as my address. And so we used their address, and so I got on the bus, traveled up Vermont and Sunset and I went to Hollywood High even though I wasn't supposed to.

BN: How long of a bus ride was that? It's a good distance.

HK: Yeah, I don't know, probably an hour.

BN: And then this is a different family than the ones your brother lived with?

HK: Correct, different family.

BN: Because he also, he was doing kind of the same thing.

HK: Yes.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.